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Consequences on ecosystems

by Simon-Karl on March 13, 2018 - 3:19pm

The purpose of the article from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to discuss about the consequences that influence ecosystems in America. The researchers points out 6 of them: Life cycle event, range shifts, food web disruption, threshold effects, parasites and diseases and extinction. Their data comes mainly from other U.S. governmental organization reports, before President Trump’s election.

The first consequence the researchers give is that the life cycle is disturbed. Indeed, migratory animals come back earlier up North than previous years, especially birds, because it gets warmer sooner. This may be dangerous because the ecosystem they come back in is not ready, talking about food availability.

Secondly, the EPA says that as a result of global warming, biomes tend to go higher North in order to stay in the same range of temperature. This migration leave place for erosion and desertification of certain areas.

Thirdly, the report showed that climate change negatively affects the food chain of ecosystem. For example, think about the polar bear ecosystem and the warming of oceans. This is one of the consequences of climate change on ecosystems.

Fourth, the threshold effect is also a consequence of climate change on ecosystems. It happens when a ecosystem can’t bounce back from a stressor. For example, great drought may evaporate all the water and it will not return afterwards.

Fifth, the researchers discussed that climate change may lead to invasive species and parasites to come more up North and destroy the native ecosystems. Since invasive species stay in more warmer regions of the world, but when it gets warmer in the poles, these species seek new territories to invade.

Finally, climate change is one of the main reason of species extinction. When the ecosystem is redundant it less problematic but in the other case, it may destroy a whole ecosystem.

To conclude, I think we should put more emphasis on preventing global warming in order to reduce the consequences on ecosystem, but what?

Comments

To begin, I have decided to respond to this article because I think that it is important to underline the importance of each ecosystem of the different species. Indeed, because of multiple changes, it disturbs them and can cause extinction in different species. Furthermore, I found very interesting how the article went over different categories that disturbs the ecosystems. Migration is a very important process and sometimes, we do not think enough about humans activities and how they can disturb a lot of things. For instance, global warming disturbs the migration of many species as the article indicated and they can sometimes lack food. There is also the threshold effect that is important to keep in mind, in fact when an ecosystem cannot bounce back from a stressor it leads to multiple problems for the species living in this habitat. We need to be careful with our ecosystems if we do not want to disturb them, everything needs a place to grow where it is adapted for this particular thing, if we start to disturb them too much, many important species will continue to extinct. Finally, the food chain is very important, in fact, us humans rely on it. In that sense, if the food chain is broken, multiple species will end up without something to eat. Global warming causes this problem and global warming is getting worse because of us too. I really think that by doing small mistakes we are killing the earth little by little thus, our habitat, our ecosystem. We should take the measures necessary to save what we have left.

I found Simon-Karl’s summary very interesting, due to the fact that he is touching the main points of the ecosystem changes and their affect. When the author mentions that the climate change has negative affects on the food chain of ecosystem, I directly related this content to the article I was readying about. It proves how any catastrophe up coming in our century is bringing a chain of other issues with it. As for example, cutting down the Acacia tress, will affect ants that are living in it, considering that the ants have a big impact on the food chain. (“Even small changes within an ecosystem…”, 2018) Thus, the food chain may be directly related to our population in the long-term. Once again, climate change is a part of that issue chain. “It happens when an ecosystem can’t bounce back from a stressor. For example, great drought may evaporate all the water and it will not return afterwards.” Those are high point that the population should be focusing on.

Binghamton University. (2018, February 1). Even small changes within an ecosystem can have detrimental effects: Interactions between small organisms are 'keystone' interactions that scale up to shape whole ecosystems. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 15, 2018 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180201173308.htm